I’ve heard the sentiment for decades, “Hindsight is 2020.” It erupted a sense of eye rolling in my spirit, that is because I was once told by my opthamologist that my eyesight was about 20/400. Talk about shade. Tis true, however. So the consideration of someone having perfect vision, being able to read the very bottom of the eye chart, which resembled the morse code to me was a bit disheartening. However, following the year 2020, it is my sincere hope and prayer that each of us may glean from what we learned, what we lost to operate in the knowledge of what 2020 taught and modeled and declared for us.

Essentially the term hindsight simply put means deep reflection and when placed with 20/20, to what extent are we able to reflect and see things more clearly? The consideration lifts up our acuity – which is by definition, “our sharpness or keenness of thought, vision or perception.” As we have embarked upon 2021, are we able to gather the learning, but more importantly, the praxis that the year 2020 offered? Will we apply what we learned to better ourselves, our community, our relationships, our existence? What might hindsight is 2020 mean for you? And what will you use as your marker, your evidence so to speak if the Lord allows you the blessing of December 2021? How will you fully be able to embrace and trace the hand of God in your transitioning to indeed say that hindsight was 2020?

In the year 2020, I learned even more deliberately that I am a mobile sanctuary and that I house and carry the presence of God within me. As my church home’s physical building closed in early March, I was grateful for the practices that I’d already established in our home – prayer, worshipping and praise as a familiar regimen. While I certainly missed the gathering of the saints, I didn’t require others to experience the atmosphere engulfed with the Holy Spirit. What I did miss was sharing that shift with others. I missed looking around the sanctuary and witnessing the release of a sister or brother in Christ, or someone following the command of God to go stand with someone or sit with them as they received the manna going forth. I missed that collective downpour in the corporate manner, and even though our churches have done a remarkable job of transitioning virtually, my takeaway is to never take for granted the physical assembling of the saints. I didn’t know what a blessing it carried.

In the year 2020, I learned to become more agile in my work and become even more grateful for the work that God has allowed. I have beautiful coworkers who genuinely stopped before the business of meetings to check in and some even asking that you “hang on” after the meeting to speak more directly. I carry into 2021 faith and hope and trust in others in a more distinct manner. I witnessed people working with others in their home, amidst fear and uncertainty and yet they were remarkable in getting work done. Perhaps that existed all along, but sheltering in place magnified this truth in unimaginable ways and for that I am grateful.

In the year 2020, I can say that I experienced the value of connection – my relationships with my family and my tribe. Phone calls, texts, marco polos, facetimes and zooms became the norm of “checking in” in exchange for in person experiences. I enter 2021 not taking for granted any of those interactions and I wait with great expectancy to embrace others.

Albeit I work in the arena of diversity, equity and inclusion, I spent an endless amount of hours educating others on the intersections of race and culture, particularly amidst witnessing the deaths unarmed black bodies. My takeaway is summed up in a tote bag my soror and newly minted Dr. J’Nai Adams gifted me, “Joy is an act of resistance.” It is imperative that each of us deliberately nourish activity that transcends the consequences of the melanin in our skin to live in abundance. That’s a deep hindsight truth.

The year 2020 was hard, although filled with many blessings. Understanding the value of moments and breath and toilet paper were loudly pronounced – and the reliance on each other to care for one another was significant. Someone intentionally not wearing a face covering or not choosing to remain at home, cost others their life. And perhaps this is the crux of what we should have understood and practiced all along – that we must remain connected to God for anything and everything. The truth that rang and still does is that I need God for every crumb of my survival! There were days filled with joy to be sure – but there were equally (if not a wee bit more) days filled with questions, and murmuring and tears and fear and uncertainty and anger and hurt and pain – more than I ever experienced or imagined or considered. But God. John 15: 5 reads, “I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire. But if you make yourselves at home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon. This is how my Father shows who He is—when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples.” When I admit that hindsight is 20/20, I am in fact admitting upon deep reflection that someone should have, could have been different. I wonder what maturity I lacked in the former as opposed to the latter? And more critical, how might I port wisdom from one situation to the next, in order not to repeat performances of the past?

My prayer, my hope, my intention, my “hindsight is 2020,” is that we carry maturity with us – that we’ve grown and continue to evolve from that which bears no consequence of benefit to the Kingdom or the branches surrounded and entangled with us. If it is not edifying the body of Christ, I choose to disengage. If I am to be an effective branch, my connection to the vine will benefit me to not lose the hindsight of 2020 as we embrace 2021. The Snellen Chart begins with the largest letter and gets smaller as one transitions to the bottom. In 2021, may we see every large and looming thing, but concurrently, be blessed to recognize the most minute consideration as well. May we operate in the comprehensive, as well as the concise. Prayerfully, we may actualize the bottom of the chart and operate in precise acuity. Happy New Year! Remember to not forget – Hindsight is 2020.